FTFA: "In fact, the term "goose bumps" was originally slang for the red bumps caused by venereal diseases."

Puts the children's horror series in a new light.

Pretty cool. As the father of new twins, I'll sing these to them every day.
If I'm not mistaken "Ring around the Rosie" is supposedly based on the Great Plague of London in 1665.
It may have been debunked, but it's still fun to think about it.

No "ring around the rosie" or "London bridge"?

Not a very good list then.

baka-san: No "ring around the rosie" or "London bridge"?

Not a very good list then.

Seriously. Ring around the rosie definitely should have been on there given that it was about the Black Plague.

GAT_00: baka-san: No "ring around the rosie" or "London bridge"?

Not a very good list then.

Seriously. Ring around the rosie definitely should have been on there given that it was about the Black Plague.

Except it's not. (new window)

Little Boy Blue.....He needed the money!

If you read the Grimms versions of most fairy tales, they're pretty gruesome. IIRC, the original ending to Snow White was making the stepmother put on iron shoes that had been heated in the fire until she fell dead of exhaustion, and the original ending of The Little Mermaid is that she throws herself into the sea and dies rather than kill the prince to get her tail back.

This was "adapted" from the Daily Mail feature ^{(^)} tossed up two weeks ago (Aug 16th), or possibly the Guardian Unlimited review ^{(^)} someone phoned in last weekend (and which no doubt made the main page again), or any of the other reviews that have appeared in the last month.

Anyway, they were all adapted from some book called, Pop Goes The Weasel: The Secret Meanings Of Nursery Rhymes by Albert Jack (clearly an alias). And though Bertjack's a hack, in my book, he still deserves some credit for this fluff. The newspaper features not only give A.J. his due by citing their source, they also managed to fit it all on one page.

MissFeasance: If you read the Grimms versions of most fairy tales, they're pretty gruesome.

And in Sleeping Beauty, she's not asleep, she's dead. And the prince doesn't kiss her, he farks her. What kid wouldn't like a story about necromancy?

MissFeasance: If you read the Grimms versions of most fairy tales, they're pretty gruesome. IIRC, the original ending to Snow White was making the stepmother put on iron shoes that had been heated in the fire until she fell dead of exhaustion, and the original ending of The Little Mermaid is that she throws herself into the sea and dies rather than kill the prince to get her tail back.

Little mermaid was Hans Christen Anderson (and she turned into foam upon the waves)

Lol...I think you mean necrophilia. Unless you mean he farked her so well she came back from the dead...

I thought "Pop goes the Weasel" was referring to Smallpox.

A penny for a spool of thread,
A penny for a needle-
That's the way the money goes,
Pop! goes the weasel.

By all accounts, early Smallpox inoculation consisted of piercing a Smallpox blister, using a thread to absorb the pus and other fluids associated with the blister, and then embedding that thread into the person being inoculated by placing it over (or in) a fresh cut.

MissFeasance: If you read the Grimms versions of most fairy tales, they're pretty gruesome. IIRC, the original ending to Snow White was making the stepmother put on iron shoes that had been heated in the fire until she fell dead of exhaustion, and the original ending of The Little Mermaid is that she throws herself into the sea and dies rather than kill the prince to get her tail back.

Yeah, and it's not just Grimms', but a lot of traditional fairy tales from different cultures are more than a little farked up. I mean holy shiat, some of them are just off the wall violent!

Like the Bible for example. There's some really weird stuff going on in the old testament, to say the least. No wonder Europe was such a violent place when the basic education consisted of the bible and lovely things like bears mauling children and God murdering people left and right.

/I troll for freedom.
//But it is a valid point.

Cracked.com = list

OK, I have to admit that was worth reading for the origin of Goosey Gander, which is one of the origins I didn't know. Although this thread is more worth reading because now I know where to get the full story from (thanks, the Mole of Production.)

Also, if you think these nursery rhymes are messed up, try reading more detailed versions of Greek mythology. I had a (slightly) sanitized version of Greek myths as a kid growing up. Sanitized means they changed "So Zeus was out one day and saw a hot girl/swan/titan and she ran away, so he raped her" to "a fair maiden caught Zeus's eye... and then nine months later Hera was really pissed off."

Really, half of Greek mythology is RAPE RAPE RAPE.

/Aphrodite's one of the few Greek gods who isn't the result of Zeus raping someone. She was born in adult form from the sea foam after someone threw Uranus's cut-off junk in the ocean.

Little Bo Peep was prone to weep
coming in going in fits
Turns out she had acute angina
good thing, cause she aint got no tits.

Hansel and Gretel= cook and eat the children
Peter, Peter Pumkin Eater = Spousal neglect/abuse
Old Mother Hubbard = Call ASPCA
An Old Woman Who Lived in a Shoe = child abuse

...and several others.

Somebody save me from the psychological trauma!

I feel like huffin' and puffin'... won't someone stop me???

/I'm scarred

Yes, I have fond childhood memories. Will repeat them to my grandchildren.

//lil' black Sambo and Uncle Remus

Humpty Dumpty was not an egg!

dfacto: MissFeasance: If you read the Grimms versions of most fairy tales, they're pretty gruesome. IIRC, the original ending to Snow White was making the stepmother put on iron shoes that had been heated in the fire until she fell dead of exhaustion, and the original ending of The Little Mermaid is that she throws herself into the sea and dies rather than kill the prince to get her tail back.

Yeah, and it's not just Grimms', but a lot of traditional fairy tales from different cultures are more than a little farked up. I mean holy shiat, some of them are just off the wall violent!

Like the Bible for example. There's some really weird stuff going on in the old testament, to say the least. No wonder Europe was such a violent place when the basic education consisted of the bible and lovely things like bears mauling children and God murdering people left and right.

/I troll for freedom.
//But it is a valid point.

Must be sad to be you. You need enlightenment.

Richard Saunders
Hansel and Gretel= cook and eat the children

More like:

"There's 3 of us an one apple. It's me or the kids.... fark the kids"

Ring around the rosy
Pocket full of posie
Ashes to ashes
We all fall down

A childhood ditty about the Black Plague.

...cool, huh?

Little Miss Muffet
Sat on her tuffett
Eatin her curds and whey

along came a spider
who sat down beside her
and said "Hey, what's in the bowl, biatch?"

sjbiars: By all accounts,

Nursery rhymes are part of the oral tradition, and thus subject to the purple monkey dishwasher effect. By all accounts, the accounts available to go by are worthless. These "Just So" stories tell us more about our current culture than they do about our past. It's fun to read the rationalizations of folklore, but don't pretend this is a history lesson. We've got two aspects of human nature playing against each other here:

A. We humans like catchy nonsense songs at least as much as we like historical ditties.
B. It's easier to remember a catchy tune than it is to remember the historically accurate lyrics that go with it.

The author's conceit here is, "It's ok that I can't support my conclusions. It's more important that people get history lessons that they'll remember as well as nursery rhymes."

Richard Saunders:
Must be sad to be you. You need enlightenment.

Hit me, it's early and I'm bored.

Necromancy? The prince was a dark necromancer?

/new twist? You be the judge.

Wikipedia indicates that it was James I, not Charles I, that was in bed with George Villiers.

. . . Oddly, I trust Wikipedia more.
I can't believe I just wrote that.

Anyway. Starts to make me dubious of the other ones, too.

the Mole of Production: sjbiars: By all accounts,

Nursery rhymes are part of the oral tradition, and thus subject to the purple monkey dishwasher effect. By all accounts, the accounts available to go by are worthless. These "Just So" stories tell us more about our current culture than they do about our past. It's fun to read the rationalizations of folklore, but don't pretend this is a history lesson. We've got two aspects of human nature playing against each other here:

A. We humans like catchy nonsense songs at least as much as we like historical ditties.
B. It's easier to remember a catchy tune than it is to remember the historically accurate lyrics that go with it.

The author's conceit here is, "It's ok that I can't support my conclusions. It's more important that people get history lessons that they'll remember as well as nursery rhymes."

I haven't read the book so I can't account for this person's scholarship. But it's not like we're dealing with incredibly ancient rhymes here. These are ditties that have stuck around in the English language since about 500 years ago, but there's no way that they'd exist exclusively in oral form, and they probably wouldn't have been preserved without the expansion of writing. The early rhymes all deal with major social/political events, and the earliest ones date well after the invention of the printing press.

Incontinent_dog_and_monkey_rodeo: Unless you mean he farked her so well she came back from the dead...

That's exactly what the prince does, he farks dead sleeping beauty and brings her back to life.

Also the Brothers Grimm just recorded the stories they published. The tales are who knows how old.

the Mole of Production:

Those are pretty cool articles, up until the point when the did the Blackbeard legend -- which was specifically written by Snopes.com a couple of years ago -- and they don't credit them.

MissFeasance: If you read the Grimms versions of most fairy tales, they're pretty gruesome. IIRC, the original ending to Snow White was making the stepmother put on iron shoes that had been heated in the fire until she fell dead of exhaustion, and the original ending of The Little Mermaid is that she throws herself into the sea and dies rather than kill the prince to get her tail back

I would have like those endings better than the Disney crap. I might have been the only kid who never liked any Disney cartoon.

The funniest part of the article was in the comments section where the guy gives his review of Disaster Movie. Goddamn that guy is funny! He ought to be a professional movie reviewer. \

Here I will post it.:
WackBatman

Yeah! Goldberg and Felcher are terrible, I just spent $120 bucks for me and my family to watch Disaster Movie. I never wanted to hurl into my own popcorn that much in my whole miserable life. Why oh why did I listen to my down syndrome kids. We should've stayed home and hit each other with dildos and copys of the real movies.
Damn you Finklestein and Fagburg, I'm gonna sue you assholes when I finish doing a stretch in the penetentary for burning down the movie theater and resisting arrest tonight. I barely have enough time to take this laptop from some random prick at the Starbucks and write this review of the film for all you loyal readers that depend on Cracked baners to spot a good movie for you.
Under any circumstances, DO NOT LET THE HYPE FOOL YOU SHEEPLE.
shiatstein and Bratwurst will make you grab the person in the theater next to you, and head-butt them in the nose for laughing at a single joke in this movie. I give it a thumbs down.
Posted on 8/30/2008 12:24:52 AM

Incontinent_dog_and_monkey_rodeo: Lol...I think you mean necrophilia. Unless you mean he farked her so well she came back from the dead...

No, no, I think he was right the first time.
After all, if she was "asleep", and then he "woke her up", wouldn't that mean if she were dead he brought her back to life?

The conclusion would be that the Prince in Sleeping Beauty was a powerful Necromancer.

/insert "Rod of Power" joke here.

You know, I've found some of Cracked.com's facts to be "iffy" at best, and often outright lies.
Like Wikipedia, I'd take anything on Cracked with a pinch of salt.

MissFeasance

the original ending of The Little Mermaid is that she throws herself into the sea and dies rather than kill the prince to get her tail back.

You missed the point of the story - because she died a human and a christian, her soul was taken to heaven instead of turning into foam like all mermaids. Therefore: happy ending!

Seriously though, that Andersen guy was farked in the head.

Old, very old. Seen this shait 30 years ago. Next they will be saying there is evil intent in our limericks.

There once was a man from Nantucket
he had a .... (well you know)

Mary Mary quite contrary, Shave your bush its too damn hairy!

Now where did that one come from?

nurfy

Incontinent_dog_and_monkey_rodeo: Lol...I think you mean necrophilia. Unless you mean he farked her so well she came back from the dead...

No, no, I think he was right the first time.
After all, if she was "asleep", and then he "woke her up", wouldn't that mean if she were dead he brought her back to life?

The conclusion would be that the Prince in Sleeping Beauty was a powerful Necromancer.

Except farking her didn't bring her back to life. She became pregnant, gave birth (to twins, I recall), and one of the babies tried to suckle her finger and sucked out the thorn that had killed her, which brought her back to life.

And an early version of Little Red Riding Hood had the wolf cut up the grandmother and serve her to Red.

/loves pre-censored fairy tales

the Mole of Production: sjbiars: By all accounts,

Nursery rhymes are part of the oral tradition, and thus subject to the purple monkey dishwasher effect.

I have GOT to try to work "purple monkey dishwasher effect" into a conversation!

/Caution: touching link may cause severe burns.

//lil' black Sambo and Uncle Remus

The first book I really remember, kept taking it out of the library, again and again - four, maybe five, years old. Didn't make me racist. I also had a cloth gollywog. Also didn't make me racist.

Also the Brothers Grimm just recorded the stories they published. The tales are who knows how old.

Can I say 't', 'h', 'i', 's' without actually having to say THIS?

the Mole of Production sjbiars: By all accounts,

Nursery rhymes are part of the oral tradition, and thus subject to the purple monkey dishwasher effect. By all accounts, the accounts available to go by are worthless. These "Just So" stories tell us more about our current culture than they do about our past. It's fun to read the rationalizations of folklore, but don't pretend this is a history lesson. We've got two aspects of human nature playing against each other here:

A. We humans like catchy nonsense songs at least as much as we like historical ditties.
B. It's easier to remember a catchy tune than it is to remember the historically accurate lyrics that go with it.

The author's conceit here is, "It's ok that I can't support my conclusions. It's more important that people get history lessons that they'll remember as well as nursery rhymes."

In my people's tradition, it's all word-of-mouth, so music has become an important way of "passing things on". One of the biggest problems with the stories, is the "purple monkey dishwasher effect" taken up by mainstream media. There's a difference between getting your culture 'out there' and letting it take on a corrupted life of it's own.

/have some very different 'stories' handed down about many 'nursery rhymes'.

Did anyone else notice how when they copied and pasted the last line of the article from Wikipedia, they forgot to delete the "[citation needed]"?

I've read some of the original 'Brothers Grimm' stories, so I find this more interesting then scary.

here is the revised version of two i learned as a pre-teen:

little miss muffet
sat on her tuffet
eating her curds and whey
along came a spider
and sat down beside her
and she squished it with her spoon

also

hickory dickory doc
the mouse ran up the clock
the clock struck one
and two got away with minor injuries

/obscure ???

There was an old woman who lived in a shoe
She had so many children she didn't know what to do
Until Jack Be Nimble Jack Be Quick
Taught her how to use a candle stick.

tentacularone: Did anyone else notice how when they copied and pasted the last line of the article from Wikipedia, they forgot to delete the "[citation needed]"?

I imagine you didn't notice that it was part of a joke?

Ring
around
the rosy
is
NOT
about the farking plague!

Wee Willy Winkie,
Runs through the town,
Upstairs and downstairs,
In his nightgown.

Peeking through the windows,
Crying through the locks,
"Are all the children sleeping,
For now it's nine O'clock!"
Fap, fap, fap, fap, fap, fap.

*************
Peter, Peter pumpkin eater,
Ties his wife and likes to beat her.
Likes his leather, whips and chains,
To pleasure her, he goes to pains.
*************
Jack be nimble,
Jack be quick,
Jack jump over the candlestick.

Jack jumped low,
It was quite heinous,
Jack burned the fur right off his anus.

little miss muffet
sat on her tuffet
eating her curds and whey
along came a spider
and sat down beside her
and said, "Hey! What's in the bowl biatch!"

Guairdean: There was an old woman who lived in a shoe
She had so many children she didn't know what to do
Until Jack Be Nimble Jack Be Quick
Taught her how to use a candle stick.

coffee...keyboard...bill... etc.